


The Midnight Hour

by Severina



Category: Stargate Universe
Genre: Community: smallfandomfest, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2015-11-28
Packaged: 2018-05-03 19:22:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5303678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The floor of the observation deck is cold and rather uncomfortable, but he's not tempted to suggest that they move to the chairs grouped in twos and threes around the windows. There is something intimate about sitting with her in the shadows, unseen at first if anyone else were to enter the room, as unlikely as that would be at this hour.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Midnight Hour

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Round 18 of smallfandomfest for the prompt "how do we know when it's midnight"
> 
> * * *

"How do we know it's midnight?" Chloe asks.

She tucks her knees up, wraps her arms around them. The stars streaming by play patterns of light on her face when she turns to rest her chin on her knees and look at him, and Nick is struck again by how beautiful she is. Not simply because he loves her, though of course that is a factor in his analysis, but also in a purely objective manner. It is all in the sharpness of her cheekbones, the paleness of her skin; the set of her jaw and the dark fall of her hair. She is stunning, and the fact that she does not have a pack of libidinous boys surrounding her at every moment of the day is one that continues to astound him.

He blinks, clears his throat. "We've coordinated our schedule here on Destiny with the time zone at Command, as you know," he says. "Then we calibrate the internal—"

"It was a rhetorical question." 

"Aaah." He leans back on his elbows and crosses his ankles. The floor of the observation deck is cold and rather uncomfortable, but he's not tempted to suggest that they move to the chairs grouped in twos and threes around the windows. There is something intimate about sitting with her in the shadows, unseen at first if anyone else were to enter the room, as unlikely as that would be at this hour.

"Perhaps we know because our bodies tell us," he says. "The internal clock works more efficiently than any scheduling construct created by modern man. It knows when we need to shut down for maintenance."

"Says the man who's usually still working in the middle of the night."

He inclines his head. "And my consistency in that regard is how you knew exactly where to find me." 

A shadow crosses her face, brief and nearly hidden by the flickers of light from the FTL stream. He had crept from their bed shortly after Destiny's lights had dimmed, with Chloe sleeping warm and sated beside him. Had dressed quietly by the glow of the stars. The whinge of conscience at leaving her can be muffled when the ideas starting flitting through his brain, algorithms and mathematical proofs that could solve this problem or that issue dancing just out of reach. Then he needs his console, his notebook, his mind turned fully on. Not even the curve of Chloe's naked hip or the tangle of her hair on the pillow can entice him to stay.

If Chloe is his soul then Destiny is his beating heart, and he cannot resist her.

Chloe shifts where she is curled in upon herself, her face now carefully blank. When they first met she had been hopeless at hiding her feelings, every emotion she felt playing out in the curve of her lips and the set of her brow. Necessity has now given her some skill at subterfuge. Necessity and, perhaps, the aliens intervention. And while this is the Chloe with whom he fell in love, Nick can still sometimes not help missing the girl who was so open and guileless; whose thoughts could be read simply by gazing at her face.

He sits up straighter, reaches across the divide between them to wrap his palm around her shin. She stiffens slightly, for an instant, before she relaxes under his touch. It had been a bad one, then. Not a surprise. It is only the worst of nightmares that drive her to leave the warmth of their bed and seek him out in the night. If she resents him for not being there to pull her into his arms and soothe her when she woke, she gives no sign of it. And he is here now, has left his work to give her his time and his presence and his company. As he always has; as he always will. He can only hope it is enough.

"The witching hour," she muses after a time. "I wonder why they called it that."

"Are you going to bespell me, Miss Armstrong?"

She lifts her head from where it rests upon her bent knees, and the smile she gives him is just short of wicked. "I think I already have, Doctor Rush."

"Indeed," he murmurs. 

No one has ever been able to pull him away from the tangle of equations in his brain, not even—No. He will not think of Gloria now, not when Chloe is stretching out her legs and crawling over to join him; settling in his lap with a contented sigh and draping her arms around his neck. Whatever dreams haunted her sleep are gone when she looks in his eyes, and she smiles again when his hands find her hips and pull her in tight. 

When she presses her lips against his it is still a shock to his system. When he buries his hand in her hair and deepens the kiss there is always still a tiny part of him that expects her to pull away. He steels himself for the rejection; for her eyes to cloud with surprise and confusion, and the sudden knowledge that she is cavorting with a scrawny old man twice her age, and a cantankerous one at that. But when Chloe does squirm playfully in his arms and twist away it is only to smooth her palms down his cheeks and wrinkle her nose.

"Time for a wee shave?"

She lifts one hand away to hold her thumb and forefinger a half inch apart. "Just a smidge," she says. "A trim?"

"I think I can handle that," he answers. But he blinks when she props a hand on his shoulder to lever herself up and out of his lap, his fingers grasping at air when she slithers away from him. Blinks again when she holds out a hand to help him up. "What? _Now?_ "

"Can you think of a better time?"

He looks beyond her, as though he can see through the walls to the bridge and the analyses still running on his screen; his notepad and pencil abandoned in his chair when Chloe showed up with wide shell-shocked eyes. He really needs to complete them before Eli gets there and muddles with his figures, but—

He takes Chloe's hand and lets her heave him up, then uses his momentum to tug her tight against his body and show her just how interested he is in returning with her to their room. The midnight hour should, perhaps, not always be used for purely scientific pursuits. Especially not when a nubile young woman has much more intriguing ideas.

He follows where she leads, down empty echoing corridors, and smiles when she throws him a particularly winsome look over her shoulder. Tonight, Destiny will have to wait. 

He may even get to that shave. Eventually.


End file.
